chapter 183

We were at highest readiness as we dropped out of FTL. It took a few moments to identify and pinpoint the listening station. It was quite far out, far enough away that they would not be aware of us before we were back in FTL.

The message was sent. It was pretty basic, saying that we would leave the area and not mention their presence here.

It must be a terrible way to live, skulking at the edge of civilization, just because if you show yourself, others are going to try to take advantage of you in any way they can, or simply try to destroy you because you exist.

I know that I can be cruel, vindictive, and many other not-so-nice properties people can have, but I don’t take advantage of people who many think are lesser just because of their origins.

It will take a while before the message reaches the listening station, and already we were experiencing a lot of gravity as we were accelerating, with FH pulling everything she can from all the crew members to make us go as fast as possible.

Faster than we ever have before, we were back in FTL. This time the trip will be 14 days long, getting us quite far away from this area. Hopefully, there won’t be another similar situation there.

I flicked through the information we had on Wirtyortons. Their species had been wiped out in a large war nearly 1,000,000 years ago. They started to appear in portals about 100,000 years ago, never making a comeback as a species.

From the histories FH has, no species that isn’t a black threat that has fallen has ever managed to climb their way back into a recognized species of civilized space. Plenty have become truly influential pirates, but nothing more.

There’s a hierarchy, not just in the Milky Way galaxy but in the entire known universe. While individual power can make you incredibly important, feared, or respected, what’s behind you is always evaluated in that calculation.

The rest of the crew dispersed, going to do their own thing, but I stayed in the command chair, meditating while thinking on how to deal with the future.

There are exceptions. The vast majority of intelligent species who manage to leave portals will be hunted down unless their species is still active in the universe.

FH has found plenty of examples where entire organizations and even civilizations were erased out of existence for daring to hunt and kill some of those who were made by and then escaped portals.

We even have a list of species from the adventurer’s guild that should never be hunted or killed after they leave the portal, and some we should not touch, even while they are inside a portal. Their backing was simply too strong and vicious.

To summarize, the lowest rung of intelligent life was the ones made inside portals, with a few exceptions. Right above that were individuals whose species had fallen. They are treated terribly by most others, taken advantage of, hunted down, and worse. Individual power can mitigate that, but not enough.

If you become a part of some organization, that can help. Corporations do a lot of recruiting from fallen species, promising safety, but in return, treating you barely better than slaves. Some will turn to piracy, while the best choice, as far as FH can find, is to try to join the Adventurers Guild as an employee, not a member.

A lot of humanity I would enjoy torturing to death, especially those corporate bastards who only see the world in numbers on a spreadsheet. If you make their overall spreadsheet go up, you’re valuable; if you make it go down, you’re their worst enemy.

This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.

FH has compiled a list for me. On that list were the current most powerful nations, individuals, corporations, and so on of humanity. Only about 20% of this list I have a problem with, mostly the corporations that led to the destruction of Earth, but there are plenty of others.

That 80% isn’t wonderful either, but it also isn’t terrible. Billions of lives that survived the collapse of Earth are now threatened once again by other species who do not want to see a competitor rise.

A singular me should not be able to do anything that influential, but I’ve talked to enough war veterans and heard their stories. One person can have a tremendous influence, but even more, just being there with others willing to do the same, this is what gives strength and why a large backing is so feared.

Lola quite properly brought up the problem of me no longer being fully human, but FH had already found out that that didn’t matter to the rest of the galaxy. Also, cybernetic humans were quite a common new subspecies for humans, as nearly 95% of humans who are born on Earth had some type of cybernetic augment.

Humans were doing what we were best at, spreading out and adapting at a terrifying rate. FH was doing her best to keep us in the loop, but we humans have always been a bit of a secretive bunch, so who knows what’s actually out there by now.

No clue if we can help or not, but getting closer to the action seemed to be the wise course of action, as I really do not want the thousand headaches that would follow after someone finds out I am a part of a fallen species.

Before all of that, we needed to get stronger. The skills we will acquire will help a lot with that, as my crew members barely have any. My own skills are not where I want them to be, as time is merciless. There simply isn’t enough of it to do all the things I want to do.

So right now, I’m pushing back all my other projects and making myself a torture device, because that’s the best way to describe what I’m about to make.

Lola has done her best to help me with my resistance skills, and so has sparring with Sam and Dean, but a lot of my resistance skills cannot be trained so simply.

It will be a device that will be implanted inside of me; otherwise, it wouldn’t work properly. It will be able to do lots of different types of damage to me, but the one that’s going to hurt the worst is that this device will have the ability to manipulate the fabric of space.

Just recently, FH found a reference to a weapon called the splitter bomb. It basically uses the technology that can help manipulate the fabric of space, which we use to propel ourselves through space and create shields, into something monstrously deadly.

The idea behind that weapon is to fracture space and everything within the radius of the bomb’s effect. It splits everything into lines that are pulled apart from each other quite forcefully. Of course, I don’t want to make a bomb and set it off, but a lower-strength version that would try to quite literally pull me apart should do the trick.

It took me most of the trip to make it. Lola helped me install it underneath my chest. The other pains of heat and sound and so on were incredibly painful, and I could feel them helping grow my resistance skills, but when I turned it on to its true destructive power, it was nearly the most painful pain I had ever felt.

It nearly made me fall to my knees, but through sheer will and the knowledge that I had felt something worse kept me upright, as my very being fought the effects of the device that was now installed inside me.

In only a few moments, I was sweating, barely conscious, but I forced myself to stay awake. All of this only lasted for a second, but it felt like an hour. Lola caught me as my body finally relaxed.

“Captain, I will take the device out. Don’t try to activate it again, that was way too much,” she said, barely keeping her panic at bay as she was sending healing magic into my body. Why was I bleeding so much from everywhere?

“No need, I will get used to it.” She wanted to protest, that I could see, but she held her mouth forcefully shut.

This was something that was needed, so eventually no one could take away my freedom. As I closed my eyes, I remembered the moment that changed my life forever. The sudden crash that woke me up, then the brief screams I could only barely recognise as belonging to my parents.

Then my own scream as I was covered in a substance that seemed hotter than the core of the sun. Pretty sure my vocal cords gave up almost immediately as they were trying to express what my body was feeling, but failing to properly convey the pain that coursed through me.

My body didn’t give up then, fighting for so long. Many thought that I didn’t remember—that my mind made me forget what happened—but it never did. Somehow, that feeling was lesser than the very fabric of space trying to pull me apart. I chuckled at that, getting a slap on my shoulder from Lola.

When I opened my eyes, she was glaring at me. “It’s funny that this didn’t hurt as much as I expected it to.”

She started to mumble something about an idiot captain. The list of the damage my body had sustained was quite extensive. My nano machines were hard at work fixing everything while also being confused at some things fixing themselves or simply not being damaged enough since the last scan.

That was the effect of the healing magic Lola was using. It was incredible. She should also be able to learn the skill that can resurrect people shortly after they die. It should be one of the most expensive skills out there, but it’s so prevalent in C and above rank portals that it shouldn’t be hard for us to get one. It should improve our survivability quite a lot.

“My diagnostics are showing full recovery in two days. To be on the safe side, I think I should only activate this device fully every three days, and only if you are present.”

Lola stopped what she was doing, looking straight at me. She huffed but nodded. “Yes, more than that, and it would be too big of a strain on you. Also, send me all the data you gathered; it will be helpful to monitor how the damage changes as you increase your skill ranks.”

“Sending now,” I said with a weak smile as everything still hurt way too much.